


Catalyst

by rude_not_ginger



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Drug Use, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-02
Updated: 2014-11-02
Packaged: 2018-02-23 14:22:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2550776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rude_not_ginger/pseuds/rude_not_ginger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a chemical reaction, a catalyst facilitates change but is not consumed by the reaction itself.</p>
<p>In this way, Mary Watson is a catalyst.</p>
<p>Sherlock Holmes thinks about his growing obsession with Mary Watson, and the relationships he has had with other obsessions in the past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Catalyst

Sherlock was always going to die, wasn't he? She simply sped up the reaction.

It is something to think about. After all, Sherlock has a lot to think about. Mary Watson, for one. She is on his mind often. Too often.

It is not that Mary Watson is a woman.

There is only one Woman, in as far as Sherlock Holmes is concerned. She is one with long fingernails that shine like a wet blood splatter. Most of those of the female gender he finds to be instigators (such as Sally Donovan, whose insistence in despising him has ruined many cases in the past), victims (such as Molly Hooper, the quiet and constant victim of both Jim Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes, in their own ways), motives (such as Mrs. Hudson, although she was mostly unaware of this fact during her time with her husband), and perpetrators (such as the vicious head of the Black Lotus). The Woman is all of those things and yet none of those things, and therefore completely impossible to pin down. She has become something of an idol to him, a disembodied image of complete Womanhood.

So, no. Mary Watson is not a woman.

She is a catalyst.

At university, he learned the root natures of catalysts. Mary---sweet, kind, yet clever and devious Mary---has a root nature that Sherlock neither understands nor truly wants to understand. He just thinks of her for what she does.

She does not create on her own, nor does she destroy on her own. She simply stands there, causing him to simmer uncontrollably nearby. Facilitating change, destruction, consumption, whatever.

She is not beautiful, not really. But she is, ultimately, fascinating. A blonde-haired rock weathering the roaring ocean that is John Watson, and easily accepting the storm that is Sherlock Holmes. It would almost be more comforting if she were a psychopath. At least then he could be on her level.

In some ways, she separates. She is the hydrogen peroxide separating the water that is Sherlock Holmes and John Watson into their respective hydrogen and oxygen components. He is lighter without John's oxygen holding him down, but he also feels that he's lost his grounding. He's lost the things that hold him in a singular form, that make him focused. He would hate her for this, if hate wasn't a completely irrelevant and time-wasting emotion that only facilitates failure and error.

In other ways, she makes things easier, simpler, and less toxic. He sees her pushing him and John back together, the oxidation catalyst changing carbon monoxide to the significantly less toxic carbon dioxide without any drastic temperature changes. She works on the wedding. They take a case. Something feels like it has been repaired. He would thank her for this, if such an action wasn't an enormous waste of time.

She also _consumes_. She, and the bundle of fertilized cells in her body, consume John Watson after the wedding. Or, at least, facilitate something that has already been brewing: John's eventual realization that he does not need Sherlock Holmes. It's happened so quietly and so simply that neither of them realized it and a month had passed. And John's blog no longer needs updating, because nothing new is going on. Sherlock's cases are slow and boring and he needs something new, some reaction that isn't going to happen on its own.

He thinks about this as he adds lactate to a mixture he has produced within the small, abandoned house where the drug addicts near John's home stay and get high. He thinks about Mary Watson as he uses 4-Dimethylaminopyridine, facilitating the change of morphine into a thick, gummy, injectable drug. As he changes a simple painkiller into something so much more dangerous.

He thinks about Mary Watson too often. She is no one, not really. An arm accessory to his best friend, that's what he should think of her as. Not a catalyst, not a fascinating creature standing just outside of his reach. She's never really touched him, but he thinks about her touch. Even now.

Aggravating. 

The high from black tar heroin is good, but it also comes with a deliciously vulgar feel, the knowledge that one is hardening and disrupting one's own veins with the substance. It's that vulgarity, that filthiness, that makes it a particularly addictive drug, Sherlock believes.

He doesn't inject a lot. He injects enough.

He lays his head back on the moldy mattress and his mind fills with filth, the way his veins do. Of the obscenity of a Woman's nude body straddling his, the licentious purr to Jim Moriarty's voice, and the strangely pornographic way Mary Watson's eyes look when she has been awake too long and her eyeshadow has smudged. The high from heroin is the only time Sherlock allows himself these thoughts. At all other times, they hold him back from his work. He doesn't think about work when he's high.

It's an odd thing, allowing oneself the indulgence of sexual thoughts. He has no experience in the minds of others, but he imagines it must be a common thing among drug users, considering the sheer number of pregnancies that occur within those tiny, smelly rooms. It is why he stands, shamefaced, as Molly informs John and Mary that he has been more than just sitting in the drughouse these last few nights.

He doesn't look at Mary. Even clean-faced with no more than five hours' sleep behind her, she is still fascinating. Facilitating desires he neither wants nor accepts, but has allowed to wander his mind over the course of the night. Mary's hands are manicured while Molly's are rough from her disinfectants and nitrile gloves, and yet he imagines that a slap from Mary would hurt far more.

The Woman taught him that sometimes a hit instead of a kiss is far more arousing.

He leaves, and does not see Mary again until the night he dies.

He can smell her from across the room. The Clare de la Lune perfume, the slight smell of sweat from her apparent climb into this penthouse. He sees her in fragments. Her eyeshadow is slightly smudged, and she has a gun pointed at his chest.

Liar. Liar. _Liar._

Her mascara is clumped at the edges, and she fires the gun pointed at his chest.

He has to fall forwards or _backwards._

The light hits the curve of her jaw, and she leaves him on the floor to die.

Jim coos in his ear. _That wife._

But Sherlock was always going to die, wasn't he? She simply sped up the reaction.

It is a miracle he lives. That is, of course, if miracles weren't a construct created by those who simply have no way to explain a perfectly rational series of events. All the same, he lives. Even he is surprised by this fact.

Her voice is the first thing he hears. The first real thing.

"Sherlock," she says. "You don't tell John."

He feels her hand in his. Warm, manicured, soft. Like he imagined. She digs her fingernails into his flesh and it feels like a kiss. Like he imagined.

He thinks about everything she's done. He thinks that he will still defend her. Defend her to John, because he's going to expose her. Expose her, the way he exposed the Woman to Mycroft. Defend her, the way he defended the Woman in Karachi.

Dangerous women who manipulate him. Perhaps he, like Molly, has a type. The Woman, and now this one, with short, sharp nails like a cat's claws.

And he'll defend her, despite what is happening right now. Because it always was inevitable: Sherlock Holmes would give in and desire someone again. She simply sped up the reaction.

And, unlike the other reagents within a chemical reaction, the catalyst is not consumed by the reaction.


End file.
